


There are Worse Things to Be

by Sohotthateveryonedied



Series: Batfamily Bingo [5]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Batkids Age Reversal, Brotherly Bonding, Damian Wayne is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is a Ray of Sunshine, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Issues, Gen, Prompt: Reverse Robin AU, he's a tiny kid i love him so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24864136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sohotthateveryonedied/pseuds/Sohotthateveryonedied
Summary: Reverse Robin AU: Damian is the eldest brother now and has to pick an eight-year-old Dick Grayson up from school after he gets into a fight.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Series: Batfamily Bingo [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792990
Comments: 13
Kudos: 479





	There are Worse Things to Be

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous said: "reverse robin au with Damian and Dick (and tim, if you feel like it! :D)!!!"
> 
> **Here's the ages btw:**
> 
> **Dick** — 8  
>  **Jason** — 14  
>  **Cass** — 17  
>  **Steph** — 20  
>  **Tim** — 19  
>  **Duke** — 23  
>  **Damian** — 26

“I'm here to pick up Richard Grayson,” Damian says.    
  
The secretary points to a row of chairs against the office wall. A small boy sits all the way at the end of the row, his hood pulled low over his face and knees tucked against his chest. Damian thanks the secretary and goes over.   
  
Dick looks up when Damian stops in front of him. “Hi,” he says in a small, watery voice.   
  
Damian kneels down so he’s at eye-level with him. “Are you hurt?” Dick shakes his head. His eyes shine with brimming tears. His knuckles are bruised and scraped up, but Dick valiantly tries to hide them with his sleeves. But otherwise, he isn't harmed physically which is a massive relief. Damian will wait until they’re alone to lecture him, upset as Dick already is.   
  
“Then let’s get out of here,” he says. Damian stands and ushers Dick out of the school office, nodding to the secretary as he does. He tries to ignore the judgmental stare she sets on Dick.   
  
In the car, Dick buckles himself into the back seat without a word. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve, sniffling. Damian pulls out of the parking lot and waits until they’re on the road to speak. “Would you like to talk about it?”   
  
Dick shakes his head in the rear-view mirror.    
  
“Well...we’re going to talk about it anyway,” Damian says lamely. He is not ashamed to admit that working with children is not (and has never been) his forte. But he has enough experience being chastised by his father to know the drill when it comes to discipline.   
  
“Is Bruce mad?” Dick asks tentatively.   
  
“He doesn’t know yet. Father got caught up with some affairs at Wayne Enterprises and will not be home until late. You got lucky.”   
  
Dick lets out a breath, but he’s still tense. “Are you going to tell him?”   
  
“Do you think I should?”   
  
Dick shrugs.   
  
“Then I think we can keep this between us for now. The principal said she would let you off with a warning once I told her that you’re still grieving, but this  _ cannot _ happen again. Do you understand me?” Dick nods. “Good. Now, can you tell me what happened?”   
  
Dick fidgets with the strings on his hoodie. Damian is fairly sure he’s seen that same hoodie in Jason’s wardrobe, but he doesn’t mention it. Attachment issues are the least of Dick’s problems in the wake of his parents’ deaths. If clinging to his loved ones and carrying pieces of them wherever he goes makes him feel more comfortable, then Damian doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed that comfort.   
  
“I got mad,” Dick says. “Some kids were talking about me behind my back. I don’t think they knew I could hear them, but...they were looking at me and whispering stuff." Another sniffle. "One of them came up to me and asked if my parents really splattered when they fell.” Damian winces. Children are horrible and Dick Grayson is the only exception—you cannot change his mind. (And Jason too, he supposes. But that kid has an even worse temper than Dick, so he's still iffy.)   
  
“I didn’t mean to hit him,” Dick insists, voice cracking. “I was just so angry and—and after I did it he called me a freak and then I got even  _ more  _ angry and suddenly the teacher was pulling me off him and there was blood and—” He sucks in a shuddering breath, burying his face in his knees. His voice comes out tiny and muffled: “It was an accident.”   
  
Damian understands more than he should. He remembers when he first came to live with Father and every person he met irritated him to the point of murder. And Dick has _just_ as much to be angry about, if not more. But this isn’t a time for excuses; it’s a time for teaching.   
  
“I won’t tell Father about what happened,” Damian says. “But if you don’t find an outlet for your anger soon, you are going to land in  _ real _ trouble. Trouble that I won’t be able to magic away with excuses. You need a new way to cope that doesn’t involve beating up your classmates.”   
  
“I could do that if you’d let me be Robin with Jay.”   
  
“Father has already explained to you why that can’t happen. You’re too young.”   
  
Dick sits up, glaring at Damian in the mirror despite the tear tracks on his cheeks.  _ “You  _ became Robin when you were my age. Why can't I?"   
  
“I was two years older than you  _ and  _ had a decade of experience. I was trained. You are not.” He remembers what Father said years ago after they lost Tim, when Jason forced his way up the ranks and made himself Robin, whether Bruce liked it or not.  _ I will not let another child be destroyed undertaking my mission. The Robin cape is cursed.  _ “Besides, you deserve a normal childhood. You don’t need all of this violence in your life.”   
  
“It’s already too late for that,” Dick mutters, which is true. It shouldn’t be true, but it is.   
  
They make the rest of the drive to Wayne Manor in silence. Dick’s tears dry with time and at one point he takes out a marker to draw on his nails. God, he’s so  _ young.  _ Damian doesn’t know how the hell Father did it, raising a child. Raising  _ children. _ Damian isn’t even Dick’s father and he can feel the responsibility weighing on his shoulders like a parachute made of concrete.   
  
Dick has only been with them for a few months now, but Damian hates how out of his depth he feels. He’s not used to it. It was easier with all the others: Duke and Damian clicked well from the beginning, like light and shadows uniting at the horizon. There was an understanding, and so getting along was never a problem with the two of them. Duke works with the Titans now and stays at his Gotham apartment whenever he’s not at the tower, but he makes a point of coming back home as often as he can. Tim was even easier, seeing as he joined up as Robin long before he became a brother. Damian didn’t need to worry about bonding with him because they were nothing more than hateful coworkers. By the time Damian realized it was time to end their everlasting quarrel, it was already too late.   
  
Stephanie isn’t Damian’s sister, but she’s not  _ not  _ his sister either. To this day he doesn’t know what to make of that purple bundle of energy, only that she wormed his way into all their lives and made it a home, whether they liked it or not. Cassandra is low-maintenance and gives her love quietly, much like Damian. She understands him in ways that the others don’t, so there was never an issue there. Then Jason joined up, and somehow he fit into their household as if he’d always had a reserved spot with his name on it. Damian considers Jason his brother in every way now, as if their relationship simply blended from strangers to family in one swift movement.   
  
And then there is Dick. Dick, who presents an entirely new set of problems that Damian can’t help feeling woefully unprepared for.   
  
When they get home, all is quiet inside. Jason and Cassandra are still in school at this time of day, and Tim tends to float in and out as he pleases. Today he’s floating in, apparently, what with his Red Hood helmet and muddy shoes lying in Alfred’s clean foyer. Dick sees it too and drops his backpack on the floor, sprinting to the kitchen like an excited puppy.  “Tim! You’re home!”   
  
Damian picks up Dick’s backpack and follows him at a distance. Kids these days. Tim is in the kitchen drinking orange juice from the carton when Dick jumps onto his back like the monkey he is.  _ “Shit—” _ Tim chokes on his juice. “You scared the crap out of me.”   
  
Damian knows it’s not true. If Tim had  _ really  _ been surprised, Dick would be on the floor with a broken arm by now. But Tim must be having a good day, because all he does is hitch Dick more securely on his back with a grin. And not the Joker grin, either—the real, genuine Tim Drake one.   
  
Dick’s smiling as well, prior angst forgotten entirely. “I missed you.”   
  
“You just saw me two days ago.”   
  
“Two months, actually. I’ve been counting.”   
  
Tim raises his eyebrows. “Oh. My bad, then.” He turns to whisper in Dick’s ear, “That’s what happens when you go crazy. Time gets fucked up.”   
  
“Language, Drake,” Damian tells him. Tim flips him off and takes another sip of orange juice. “And would it kill you to get a glass? If Pennyworth saw you disrespecting his kitchen like this he’d have a stroke.”   
  
Tim rolls his eyes and drops the empty carton on the counter, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Doing so smears some of the concealer covering the Joker scars on his face, but if Tim notices, he doesn’t care. Dick never does.   
  
“You’re home early,” Tim tells Dick. “That place finally expel you?”   
  
“I beat up a boy in my class.” Dick drops his chin onto Tim’s shoulder. “It was an accident.”   
  
Tim barks an amused laugh. “Well congrats, small fry. I didn’t think you had it in you.”   
  
“Did you tell Father that you’re here, Drake?” Damian asks, thoroughly tired. He’s not in the mood to play buffer today. Tim dodges Bruce like the plague whenever he can, which makes their interactions...tense. Bruce doesn’t approve of Tim’s habit of killing criminals with the gun that took down Martha and Thomas Wayne, and Tim hates being a physical reminder of all the ways Bruce failed him. They all make an effort to keep Jason, Cassandra, and Dick out of the mess that is Tim and Bruce’s fractured relationship.   
  
Damian has made it clear on his own that he will only tolerate Tim so long as he doesn’t hurt anyone, which depends on how stable Tim is feeling that day. Damian keeps an eye on him whenever he’s around Dick, just in case. And while Damian doesn’t entirely agree with the Red Hood’s methods, he and Tim have an understanding, so long as Tim abstains from mindless slaughter and only guns down those who truly deserve it. It’s a good system.   
  
“What Bruce doesn’t know won’t kill him, right?” Tim says. “And for the record, Dickie likes it when I’m here.” He pats Dick’s dangling sneaker. “Now tell me more about this fight, huh? I hope you used that move I taught you.”    
  
Dick launches into the story as Tim carries him into the living room, nodding along with every word. Damian lingers in the kitchen. Tim went that whole time without so much as a twitch or sign of the telltale insanity lurking behind his eyes, so Damian can trust him with Dick for a few minutes.   
  
He picks up the discarded juice carton and puts it in the recycling bin where it belongs. God, he can’t believe he thought being _Nightwing_ was hard when he first started. At the time, he never imagined himself ever having siblings, let alone _five_ of them—two of whom still need molding in the "growing up" department and one who is a batshit-insane zombie. Being Nightwing  _ and  _ big brother to this entire household is a role Damian never imagined he would have to juggle on his own.    
  
That's when Dick giggles at something Tim says in the next room, carefree as he’s ever been. And Damian's chest warms.   
  
Then again, there are worse things to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay fellas here's what I've got for this AU so far in case I ever want to revisit ti:
> 
> **Damian** — The first Robin, now Nightwing. Bruce hooked up with Talia at the beginning of his Batman journey and Damian was, like, grown super fast in a lab or something that way he’s like physically ten years old a year after he’s conceived. He was Robin until he and Bruce got into an argument about something and Damian left for good to become his own hero. He became Nightwing after Jon told him about the stories his dad told him about Krypton. Now he works with Bruce and is the big bro of the family, what a king.
> 
> **Duke** — He’s been the Signal from the start and joined up maybe a year after Damian did and now he works with the Titans but visits home a lot and yeah.
> 
> **Tim** — Second Robin, now Red Hood. He became Robin after Damian left and he could see how not having a partner anymore was affecting Bruce so he did the whole “Batman needs a Robin” thing and ended up becoming Robin himself. Then the Joker Jr. thing happened except after he shot Joker, Tim killed himself and then got resurrected in his coffin months later like Jason was. He got put into the Lazarus pit by Ra’s and all, then went a little crazy and came back to Gotham as the Red Hood who kills criminals with the gun that killed Bruce’s parents. What a fucking drama queen amiright.
> 
> **Steph** — Spoiler, then the first Batgirl. She became Oracle after getting paralyzed by Black Mask and now works with the Birds of Prey mainly. She's also training Cass as Batgirl.
> 
> **Cass** — Second and current Batgirl. Joined the family shortly before Tim died.
> 
> **Jason** — Third Robin, got adopted by Bruce a while after Tim died and became Robin highkey without waiting for Bruce's approval because this kid is a HERO. Also I think he'll die at some point because it's just not Jason if he doesn't die. Idk how though since Tim killed the Joker, so maybe in this AU Tim didn't kill the Joker? That would actually make more sense because it gives Tim a reason to be mad at Bruce for not avenging him and also it makes Joker available to kill Jason. Who knows man.
> 
> **Dick** — His parents died at the circus, yadda yadda we all know the drill.
> 
> [Feel free to mosey on down to my Tumblr!](http://sohotthateveryonedied.tumblr.com/)


End file.
